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SOFT-SPOKEN
Dr. Hari Sharma doesn't preach. But give him half a chance, and he will teach you all about uranium 238 (U238), or what is known as depleted uranium. Chemist, physicist, professor emeritus, Dr. Sharma was once head of India's Radiochemistry and Isotope Division.
At 74, after a lifetime of research, this is what he has to say: "The public health threat of an alpha-emitting uranium 238 dust cloud gives rise to a danger equal to that of a long-term weapon of mass destruction. The inhalation of even the smallest dust particle may cause irreparable cell damage in unprotected people, resulting in a cancer epidemic that over time could kill thousands of the exposed. Those who have inherited the cancer gene may fall first to what is euphemistically called depleted uranium."
U238 has a half-life – the time required for half its virulence to disintegrate – of four and a half billion years. Sharma foresees eternal environmental contamination wherever this substance is fired. "I appeal to the militaries of the world to ban U238," he says.
U.S. Army Reserve major and health physicist Dr. Doug Rokke shares Sharma's sentiments. After the Desert Storm war, Rokke took up a Geiger counter and led the way through the desert recovery of some 31 American armored vehicles destroyed by accidental U.S. fire of U238 from A-10 Gatling guns and/or tank munitions. Today, he suffers from what he calls a "lung crud" he's sure he picked up in the course of his mission.
He has learned of increased incidents of cancer in Iraq. He recognizes himself in sickly veterans from every quarter of the Persian Gulf War, all of whom have aged and now complain of sudden onset of postwar disease.
That includes civilians like technical advisor Karl Bruce Lane, who kept Bell helicopters aflight. Lane went to the battlefield with a clean bill of health. Nine months later he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and has since lost his colon and rectum. Observing Lane's cancer, his own illness, and that of his fellow veterans, Rokke pins the blame squarely on the fire of American and British U238 weaponry. "The Pentagon named it depleted uranium," he says. "I just label it poison."
Chemically toxic, pyrophoric to the degree of spontaneous ignition, uranium 238 is a particularly vicious weapon. Reaching its target, U238 makes a small entry hole, fragmenting into thousands of bouncing flaming BBs that blow up ammunition and burn anyone within to the point of near cremation. But the danger doesn't stop there. According to Sharma and Rokke, radioactive dust particles as small as one micron can permanently lodge in the bodies of unprotected soldiers and civilians in the region.
Predictably, NATO and U.S. Department of Defense and Veterans' Administration officials and most of their doctors say Sharma and Rokke are overreacting. They compare U238 with non-radioactive mercury. Both NATO and the Pentagon admit that U238 was used in Kosovo in Operation Allied Force, but they deny it was used against greater Yugoslavia. What is it that inspires this war of the words?
U238 begins in nature. Miners eke it out of the ground for a pittance. Many say the uranium dust they breathe makes them sick. From the mine, the uranium is transported to a processing plant for separation into chemical isotopes.
As with most minerals, U238's concentration of ore to mineral content is extremely low. Scarcer yet is the highly fissionable U235, which is prized for use in nuclear reactors and weapons. On average one can squeeze only about half a pound of U235 out of 100 pounds of raw U238.
The leftover 238 is not fissionable. Depleted of 235, unsatisfactory for bomb or electricity production, U238 was for a long time considered unusable by the nuclear industry and discarded as garbage.
As the world built and stockpiled nuclear weapons and generated more nuclear energy, this radioactive waste grew to mountainous proportions. Attempts to bury the waste were blasted by an outraged public that feared radiation would leech into soil and groundwater. U238 presented a dilemma that invited aggressive marketing.
Oxymoron came to the rescue. A name change and reeducation campaign converted the still extremely radioactive 238 to the far more palatable "depleted uranium," or DU. This slight-of-tongue made it easier to sell U238 as "depleted uranium ammunition."
Cheap, plentiful, malleable but denser than lead, uranium 238 can be manufactured into navigational devices, tank armor, missile ballast, and aircraft stabilizers. Shaped into munitions such as Gatling bullets, machine gun rounds, and missiles, the heavy metal is an exceedingly effective killer, ripping through tank armor or reinforced concrete like the proverbial knife through soft butter. What it leaves behind is uranium forever.